TV Review: ‘Doctor Who’ Special ‘The Giggle’ is a Wild Ride, but Ignores Something Important About the Show

Rating: 88/100.

It took me a while to articulate why I didn’t love the idea of David Tennant returning to Doctor Who as the 14th Doctor. The part that makes it hard to argue against it is that it is true that the anniversary specials are usually a place where the show gives itself permission revisit the past. Traditionally, Doctor Who anniversary specials have featured adventures in which the past Doctors come back to team up with the current Doctor, known as multi-Doctor episodes. What I like about that approach is that it doesn’t privilege one previous actor over all the others. To make three episodes that simply bring back a popular past Doctor to the role seems to be a way of stamping that actor as the “true” Doctor, as if to say that this isn’t Doctor Who—the never-ending series with a parade of excellent actors trading off the role—it’s The David Tennant Show.

As someone who is in love with the show, but only considers Tennant to be my fourth favorite Doctor—Matt Smith is my favorite—I don’t want to watch my favorite series, a core part of my identity, turn into The David Tennant Show. But then, I also wouldn’t support it if someone had pulled the same gimmick with Matt Smith instead, having the Doctor regenerate back into my Doctor. I always live in anxious anticipation of meeting the next Doctor and watching the show move on and move forward.

Admittedly, some of the reasoning behind Tennant’s return likely had to do with the timing of the 60th Anniversary. For one thing, last season already had a multi-Doctor episode called “The Power of the Doctor,” which was aired for the BBC’s 100th anniversary. That episode found ways to bring back Doctors 5-8 as flashbacks and aspects of the Doctor’s personality inside her own head, so doing another multi-Doctor episode for the show’s 60th anniversary might have seemed a tad repetitive. And the 60th anniversary happened to fall on a year between incarnations of the Doctor, meaning that the 60th was potentially looking at the possibility of resting a huge special on the shoulders of the show’s brand new and untested star, Ncuti Gatwa, which the BBC might have considered to be risky.

So, in some ways, I admit that making Tennant the 14th Doctor was a convenient solution to a couple of different problems simultaneously. But I still don’t fancy keeping the 60-year-old franchise forever mired in nostalgia over one single era from the past. And, in the third of the Doctor Who specials, “The Giggle,” showrunner Russell T. Davies further privileges David Tennant over all other Doctors.

In many ways, “The Giggle” is a brilliantly fun ride. Queer icon Neil Patrick Harris puts in an outstanding performance as The Toymaker—formerly known as The Celestial Toymaker—who last appeared on the show during the 1st Doctor era in 1966. The Toymaker finds his way out of his own realm into the real world, where he plants a pattern into the head of every human on earth through an image hidden in the very first television broadcast.

The hidden message in the broadcast makes every human on Earth even more self-righteous and certain that they’re right about everything. This leads to some interesting parallels to modern society that aren’t expanded upon much because the episode was already overpacked with plot, but people’s refusal to wear the device that blocks the signal in their brains hilariously mimics the anti-vaxxer response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Harris’ wild, fanciful performance as The Toymaker makes him out to be an evil ringmaster of an absurd circus, which is made all the more impressive by the recent news that Harris had never even heard of Doctor Who before being cast in the role.

One of the conceits of the episode is that The Toymaker’s realm is a fanciful one that exists outside of the normal rules of logic, and is instead governed by the rules of play and imagination. It’s a clever device that frees Davies from one of his biggest weaknesses as a writer: trying to follow his own internal logic of an episode. It gives him permission to pull solutions out of thin air, which is what he usually does anyway.

Harris’ accent shifts from German to British to American at random, and yet it never feels like an accident. Instead, it feels like a symbolic representation of the chaotic nature of The Toymaker and his realm. That’s a very precise and difficult performance to pull off, and few actors could have pulled that off as well as Harris. In fact, I’ve long said that, in the event that anyone attempts to make an American Doctor Who—which they shouldn’t—Neil Patrick Harris would be the most perfect possible choice for the Doctor.

The episode plays off of an actual piece of history: one of the very first televised broadcasts, a test performed on a ventriloquist dummy known as Stooky Bill. The episode claims Scottish inventor John Logie Baird to be the inventor of the television when, in reality, there’s some debate over the television’s true inventor, as several people developed it simultaneously. But Baird certainly was one of them, and Stooky Bill was actually his first experimental broadcast.

In addition to The Toymaker, there’s one other character from the classic series who makes a surprise appearance, and the character they brought back could not possibly have been more random. Far from being a fan favorite, the character who returns is generally disliked by the small number of dedicated Who fans who even remember them. And their addition to the story adds almost nothing, making it absolutely confounding that they were brought in at all.

But to talk about the big, controversial twist to the episode, I have to get spoilery again, so here’s your obligatory River Song warning: Beware of spoilers from here on out.

In another gimmick that, as I said, privileges David Tennant over all other Doctors, Davies invented a way to avoid having to say goodbye to Tennant’s 14th Doctor at all. The Toymaker kills the Doctor well before the episode ends but, because there are almost no rules in The Toymaker’s realm, the Doctor doesn’t regenerate, but “bi-generates,” meaning that he creates a new Doctor without destroying the old, causing David Tennant’s 14th Doctor and Ncuti Gatwa’s 15th Doctor to exist simultaneously. The twist makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, except that it happens at a time when the rules of logic are thrown out the window, so, in The Toymaker’s words, “Well, that’s alright then.”

The bi-generation gimmick does give us a chance to see Gatwa’s Doctor in all his glory as he contributes to the episode’s resolution rather than just appearing for a few brief moments at the episode’s end as is typical for new Doctors. And, while most new Doctors spend their first episode confused and bewildered while they try to figure out who their newest incarnation actually is, Gatwa has to hit the ground running and make his newly regenerated Doctor into a fully-formed character straight out of the gate. Miraculously, Gatwa pulls this off flawlessly and already demonstrates the 15th Doctor to be incredibly endearing and likable from the start.

But the refusal to say an actual goodbye to the 14th Doctor feels like this is, once again, The David Tennant Show. The 14th Doctor claims he’s going to stop running everywhere and settle down to live a normal life with his best friend Donna (Catherine Tate) and her family, but in the last scene, it’s revealed that 14 has been sneaking off in his TARDIS anyway and having continued adventures. My hope is that this will be the last of the 14th Doctor that we see until the next anniversary special in 10 or 15 years time, because, if this show intends to bring back 14 as some sort of recurring character, I’ll throw a shoe at the television every week it happens.

And, that’s not to say that I don’t love David Tennant as the Doctor, because I do. He’s wonderfully fun, whimsical, charming, charismatic, and certainly easy on the eyes (and that’s coming from a lesbian). He’s a wonderful version of the Doctor. But so is Matt Smith, and Peter Capaldi, and Jodie Whittaker, Colin Baker, Peter Davidson, Tom Baker, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, and all the rest of them. The ending to this special feels like Russell T. Davies is saying to the world: “Isn’t Tennant’s Doctor—the one I cast—a special Doctor?” They all are, Russell. They all are.

“The Giggle” is streaming now on Disney+. The next special, “The Church on Ruby Road,” streams on Disney+ on Christmas Day.

Photo courtesy of Disney+